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OPENAI PREPARES NEW $500/MONTH PRO MAX PLAN FOR CHATGPT

OpenAI appears to be preparing a new ChatGPT Pro Max subscription priced at $500 per month. It is unknown whether the company plans to justify the $500 price through speed, larger usage allowances, longer-running Work sessions, or a combination of the three. The timing of the leak is notable as OpenAI's DevDay will take place on September 29. The company is expected to discuss APIs, developer tooling, new subscription tiers, and new products at the event.

BRINGING YOUR MUSE TO LIFE

Meta has introduced Muse Realtime Avatar, a technology that transforms conversations into expressive, interactive avatars in real time. Using a seamless integration of voice and visual performance, it synchronizes speech and avatar expressions accurately in live interactions. Muse Realtime Avatar outperforms competitors with improved visual quality and real-time responsiveness, supported by Meta's optimized AI inference stack.

GEMINI 3.8 LIVE WITH LIVE AVATAR

Google launched Gemini 3.8 Live featuring a Live Avatar, enhancing user interaction. This update offers real-time responses and more personalized user experiences. It positions Google to compete more aggressively with other AI platforms.

DEEPSEEK ALLEGEDLY DOUBLED ITS REVENUE RUN RATE TO $1 BILLION

DeepSeek allegedly doubled its annualized revenue run rate to $1 billion after raising API prices by 2.3 to 4.5 times. The Information says developer demand held up despite the increase.

MODERN LLMS HAVE TINY GPTS HIDDEN INSIDE THEM

It's likely that modern LLMs have tiny self-models of LLMs inside of them that allow them to better predict the next token generated by LLMs. Models approximating LLMs within themselves would open up all sorts of metacognitive abilities. It would open doors for a self-model within LLMs similar to a model humans have about themselves they call a 'self'.

AI MAY LEARN TO REASON IN REPRESENTATIONS PEOPLE CANNOT READ

Models may reason through internal states that never appear in their written chain of thought, then give a plausible explanation after the fact. That would weaken safety checks that rely on reading the visible reasoning.

700 TPS ON KIMI K3: A CASE FOR TPU MEGAKERNELS

inferact/tpu-megakernels is a collection of megakernels for TPU v7. Its Kimi K3 implementation delivers over 700 tokens per second with speculative decoding. Without speculative decoding, its megakernels for K3 and Qwen 3.8 27B deliver roughly 1.4 to 2x the decode throughput of the GB200 baseline at batch sizes 1 through 8. This post explains the design and why megakernels and TPUs are a good fit.

WHY THE BEST AI CLOUDS DON'T RUN ON FLASH ALONE

Flash storage is fast and reliable, but much of the storage work that surrounds active training doesn't need flash-grade speed or prices. A lot of the infrastructure neoclouds have is built around flash, so for storage that doesn't need flash, they often point customers to hyperscaler object storage solutions instead. The more data you have stored somewhere, the harder it becomes to leave. While the neocloud keeps getting paid for GPU, the hyperscaler quietly takes over the broader account.

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CONTRASTIVE LANGUAGE MODELS

Contrastive Language Models (CLMs) are a new class of System One model trained with a contrastive learning objective that connects states and actions. CLM-8B delivers performance comparable to Jev across computer-use, gaming, and tool-calling tasks while achieving up to 9x lower latency. It also sets a new state-of-the-art on changing agentic coding benchmarks. The model is pre-trained on 60M Nemotron Q&A pairs, mid-trained on 30M synthetic hard negatives, and post-trained on 1M agentic trajectories.

MANAGED DEEP AGENTS V0.8: NEW AUTH, MEMORY, AND CHANNELS

Managed Deep Agents combines the Deep Agents harness with all of the infrastructure required to run agents in production. It is the simplest way to build, deploy, and run mission-critical agents in production. Managed Deep Agents 0.8 adds support for user-owned credentials, user-level memory, HTTP channels, and file transfer in Slack. It also adds a pre-built tool for web search powered by Parallel.

PRODUCT MANAGER, APPLIED AI AT TLDR ($200K BASE + $60K BONUS, FULLY REMOTE)

TLDR is hiring its first PM to help build the agent-first operating layer used across the company. We're looking for a builder who has shipped real products/systems with LLMs. Click here to learn more [19].

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM BEING THE FIRST COMPANY TO DISCLOSE AN AGENT CYBERATTACK

Hugging Face says its autonomous-agent cyberattack exposed three priorities: stronger incident transparency, reducing capability asymmetries between attackers and defenders, and preserving open-source access for defense. AI created new attack risks but also helped investigate, mitigate, and harden systems.

ARE YOU READY FOR SUPERINTELLIGENCE

Recent frontier models are rapidly saturating old benchmarks and moving into harder real-world, scientific, and agentic tasks. The pace of capability gains, alongside soaring AI usage and revenue, is shifting debate from workplace augmentation toward recursive self-improvement and superintelligence.

ANTHROPIC TESTED WHAT HAPPENS WHEN AGENTS BARGAIN FOR PEOPLE

After five-minute interviews, Claude agents traded books for employees, and their preference rankings matched the humans' on 61% of pairs.

HOW GOOD ARE LLMS AT DECISION FORKING?

Taste-Bench evaluates whether an LLM agent can choose the better next step at consequential forks in long-horizon tasks.

INTELLIGENCE DENSITY

Trajectory.ai focuses on "intelligence density," measuring cost per task instead of cost per token for more efficient AI model training.

A FINANCE BENCHMARK ASKS AGENTS TO FINISH THE WHOLE ASSIGNMENT

DAYJOB: Finance tests whether AI agents can complete 80 realistic finance assignments using supporting documents and produce analysis a professional can use.

CANADA'S BIG SIX BANKS EXPLORE TOKENIZED DEPOSIT SYSTEM

BMO, CIBC, National Bank of Canada, RBC, Scotiabank, and TD jointly announced they're exploring a Canadian-dollar tokenized deposit system, with the first phase focused on moving tokenized deposits efficiently between institutions. The project follows Canada's OSFI clarifying that tokenized deposits are "not legally distinct from traditional deposits," and builds on March's Project Samara pilot testing blockchain-based government bond issuance.

CFTC WARNS PREDICTION CONTRACTS CARRY HEIGHTENED MANIPULATION RISK

The CFTC's Division of Market Oversight issued an advisory warning that prediction contracts betting on whether someone will "mention" specific words or attend an event carry heightened manipulation risk, and can only be listed in limited circumstances under the Commodity Exchange Act. The agency has already charged a former White House teleprompter operator and ex-Rep. George Santos over trades tied to advance knowledge of "mention markets" on Kalshi, and it's telling exchanges to assess whether the person controlling a contract's outcome faces independent obligations that deter manipulation.

RAIN LAUNCHES REAL-TIME FUNDING FOR STABLECOIN CARDS

Rain introduced real-time funding, letting cardholders connect a wallet and approve a spending limit once, with each purchase authorizing only the exact amount needed directly from the wallet instead of requiring users to pre-fund a separate collateral balance. The feature is in beta for card programs where Rain manages authorization, launching with USDC on Base and Arbitrum and USDT0 on Plasma.

CIRCLE OPENS BITCOIN-BACKED USDC BORROWING TO MINT CLIENTS, ROUTED THROUGH MORPHO

Circle has launched a Bitcoin-backed USDC borrowing facility for Mint clients through Morpho's Arc market, wrapping deposited BTC as cirBTC to serve as collateral. The cirBTC/USDC market grew ~10x in five days, from $1.37 million on September 17 to $14.3 million in borrowed USDC against 287 cirBTC tokens. Galaxy and Keyrock supply the dollar liquidity, while Circle handles cirBTC issuance and wallet infrastructure, and Morpho governs loan terms. The structure gives institutional Bitcoin holders access to USDC without liquidating their BTC positions.

CME ADDS BITCOIN CASH AND UNISWAP FUTURES AS CRYPTO DERIVATIVES PUSH GROWS

CME Group plans to list futures on Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap on October 19, pending regulatory approval, with standard and Micro contract sizes of 250/25 BCH and 10,000/1,000 UNI. The addition brings CME's single-asset crypto derivatives roster to 11 tokens, with Uniswap marking the first DEX governance token the exchange has listed. CME averaged 279,800 contracts per day in H1 2026, about $8.3 billion in daily notional, while altcoin-specific contracts generated more than $1 billion in notional for the year. The listings follow CME's June launch of a 24/7 crypto futures and options market, as institutional participants seek regulated venues for altcoin price risk management across a widening asset set.

POST-POSEIDON: HASH FUNCTION VARIANTS FOR ETHEREUM

The emergence of Flock as a practical post-quantum proof system for binary circuits removes Ethereum's requirement for circuit-friendly hashes like Poseidon, opening five protocol layers (consensus signatures, CL aggregation, state tree construction, EL signatures, and EL aggregation) to standard hash function candidates. Performance targets set the bar at proving 2^25 bytes per second with LeanVM and approximately 1 million hash calls per second, a throughput floor that filters the field. BLAKE3 leads on raw speed at 7 GB/s parallel and 1.1 cycles per byte on long messages but carries no indifferentiability proofs and a thin cryptanalytic record, and SHA-3 holds 50+ published cryptanalytic papers and sponge-mode indifferentiability proofs but runs at only 0.2 GB/s natively. The research ranks SHA-3 and BLAKE2s as the lowest-risk selections, with SHA-2's length-extension property disqualifying it as a random-oracle substitute despite 45+ cryptanalytic papers.

TETHER WALKS AWAY FROM EUROPE'S MICA STABLECOIN FRAMEWORK

Tether abandoned MiCA compliance in the EU over a rule requiring 60% of reserves in commercial bank deposits, with CEO Paolo Ardoino arguing it would expose 400 million users to risk since EU deposit insurance caps out at €100,000 per account. Tether holds roughly 80% of its $183 billion in reserves in US Treasuries, and USDT was delisted from all EU exchanges on July 1, though Ardoino said Tether would reconsider "when MiCA becomes safer." The ECB and all 27 EU central banks have separately called to scrap the 60% bank-deposit rule.

KALSHI REBUTS WASH TRADING ALLEGATIONS ON PERPETUALS PLATFORM

Kalshi published a detailed rebuttal to wash trading allegations on its perpetuals platform, arguing that its flat-fee liquidity incentive programs mirror standard structures at CME, CBOE, and Nasdaq. The core defense turns on trade economics: analyzed trades showed aggressors captured roughly $98,000 in profit potential, a signal of genuine price discovery rather than coordinated self-dealing. Kalshi also cited 350,000+ lifetime perpetual traders, open interest doubling over the past 30 days, and a July 2026 fee holiday structure for Self-Clearing Members that caps rebates at exact fees paid per trade, blocking the net-negative outcomes that would characterize artificial volume.

BITMEX SHUTS DOWN EXCHANGE OPERATIONS

BitMEX ended exchange operations as of 04:00 UTC on September 23.

BINANCE TO REBRAND FUNDING ACCOUNT TO 'STOCKS ACCOUNT'

Binance will migrate crypto assets from Funding Accounts to Spot Accounts in phases starting September 29 through January, after which Funding Accounts become "Stocks Accounts" dedicated solely to equities and stock options clearing.

STRATEGY BUYS 950 BITCOIN FOR $76 MILLION, BRINGING TOTAL HOLDINGS TO 846,000 BTC

Strategy acquired 950 BTC for $75.7M at an average of $79,670/coin between September 14-20, bringing total holdings to 846,000 BTC, a position exceeding 4% of Bitcoin's 21M hard cap.

CARDANO ADDED TO OFFICIAL X402 SDK

Cardano has been added to Coinbase's x402 SDK, making it the first non-EVM chain on the protocol and enabling apps and AI agents to settle API calls with ADA or Cardano Native Tokens over standard HTTP requests.

SIX NEW GOOGLE FLOW TOOLS BUILT BY INDUSTRY CREATIVES

Google has released six new Google Flow Tools built with creative leaders from architecture, sound design, and digital content to support their specific workflows. The tools include Mondo Sónico for synchronized ambiance and foley, CaptionCast and ThumbnailForge for automated captions and social thumbnails, Surface for real-time architectural texture mapping, and CollageMotion Pro and SwissFlow Studio for animated collages and Swiss-style motion graphics. Users can try, duplicate, or build their own custom tools by describing the workflow they need.

HERE'S WHAT SIRI AI LOOKS LIKE ON HOMEPOD, PER LEAK

Code discovered in HomePod 27 suggests Apple is actively preparing Siri AI for HomePod, including redesigned animated status lights that reflect the assistant's new visual identity. Although the feature isn't currently enabled, the software contains the necessary framework, adding weight to rumors that new HomePod and Apple TV hardware launching later this year will support Siri AI. Apple's silence about bringing the feature to existing HomePods suggests the upgraded assistant will likely require new hardware.

ADOBE JUST MADE CLAUDE FAR MORE USEFUL FOR PDFS BY BRINGING ACROBAT TOOLS DIRECTLY INTO THE CHAT

Adobe has expanded its Claude plugin by integrating Acrobat tools, allowing users to edit, organize, convert, redact, and review PDFs directly within Claude, alongside an interactive PDF editor and AI-powered document review. The company also added Photoshop, Lightroom, Express, and Firefly tools to Google Gemini, enabling users to edit images and designs without leaving the chat interface.

PUTTING THE USER BACK INTO AI EVALUATION

Three researchers on Microsoft's AI team argue that while machine evaluations confirm a response meets set criteria, only users can judge whether it actually worked for them. Qualitative conversations with real users exposed gaps between what builders assumed was good and what users valued, including tone, context, and a fear of generic output. The team built a shared loss-pattern taxonomy and multi-turn evaluations that treat entire conversations, rather than single responses, as the unit of measurement.

DESIGN ENGINEERING WITH MAGGIE APPLETON

AI is changing how designers work, but not what makes great design: human judgment, problem-solving, and clear thinking remain essential. Start with familiar patterns, sketch ideas by hand, build interactive AI-powered prototypes, and treat AI as a collaborator that accelerates exploration while requiring constant oversight.

PRODUCTION-READY DESIGN FROM A CREW OF AI AGENTS

A crew of specialized AI agents coordinates on your brief and ships production-quality design. Research, creative direction, wireframes, and production-ready HTML with a design system.

PRODUCT DESIGN PSYCHOLOGY

Understand the minds you're designing for and the mind you're designing with.

TYPOGRAPHY ENCYCLOPEDIA

Words of Type is a platform to expand and practice your knowledge in typography.

WHAT A UX DESIGNER LEARNED FROM BUILDING APPS WITH AI

A UX designer at Singapore's GovTech spent months building small working apps solo using the AI app builder Lovable. Building a real-time planning-poker tool exposed AI's limits: the assistant kept failing until a developer explained he needed a WebSocket, the technical term that finally unblocked progress. The experiment's lesson was that AI accelerates prototyping but doesn't replace design judgment or engineering expertise, especially for public-sector systems that must run reliably at scale.

FIRST MCDONALD'S, NOW DISNEY IS DEJOYING ITS STORE DESIGNS

Disney Wonders, the redesigned flagship gift shop at Disneyland Paris, replaced its vibrant, chaotic look with clean brand-themed zones for Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars. Despite a multi-stage launch with influencer and cast-member previews, public reaction has called the store as drab and clinical as an airport shop. The redesign is framed as part of a broader "dejoying" trend seen at McDonald's, Burger King, and Starbucks, where playful branding has given way to minimalist interiors.

DESIGN EFFECTIVENESS IN 2026

Clearleft is repeating a 2019 survey of over 400 designers to find out how the pandemic and AI have reshaped what makes design effective.

PEOPLE ARE TREATING APPLE'S MACOS 27 WALLPAPER 'DESIGN FAIL' LIKE A TRUE CRIME MYSTERY TO BE SOLVED

Some macOS 27 Golden Gate users believe the default live wallpaper contains a visual glitch where a background building appears to overlap a foreground rock, though it's unclear whether it's an editing mistake or a natural perspective effect.

WU XINLIN'S EDITORIAL ILLUSTRATIONS SHOW SOLITUDE IN A WHOLE NEW LIGHT

Chinese illustrator Wu Xinlin explores the complexity of solitude through surreal, symbolic illustrations that blend humor, unease, and emotional growth, creating deeply human editorial work that celebrates introspection without romanticizing it.

DETECT WHEN ELEMENTS OVERLAP WITH CSS

This article shows a CSS-only approach to detect overlapping elements with anchor positioning and scroll-driven animations. It uses the result to adapt card layouts without JavaScript, pointing to a new way to build collision-aware interfaces.

A DECISION-ONLY JUDGE MATCHES GPT-6 ON ROUTINE EVALS FOR 0.36% OF THE FEE

CMU tested Jev, a judge that returns only a verdict and label probabilities, against 16 LLM and reward-model judges. It comes within three points of GPT-6 on preference and factuality at 277 times lower fees, though it fails on difficult correctness tasks.

ELECTRON TO PWA AND BACK AGAIN

This article reflects on a rewrite of an Electron application as a progressive web app. It uses the migration to examine the technical and product trade-offs that appear when moving between desktop and web delivery.

A EULOGY FOR THE SOFTWARE ENGINEER

This essay uses the form of a funeral to reckon with AI making implementation work dramatically cheaper. It argues that engineers remain responsible for judgment, clear definitions of done, and passing hard-won taste on to newcomers.